__NOTOC__ 2010 (MMX) was a common year that started on a Friday in the Gregorian calendar. It was the 2010th year of the Common Era or the ''Anno Domini'' designation; the 10th year of the 3rd millennium and of the 21st century; and the 1st of the 2010s decade.

2010 was designated the:

International Year of Biodiversity

International Year of Youth.

Pronouncing 2010 and subsequent years

Among experts and the general public, there is a debate as to how specific years of the 21st century should be pronounced in English. The year 2010 is pronounced either "twenty ten" or "two thousand (and) ten". 2010 was the first year to have a wide variation in pronunciation, as the years 2000-2009 were generally pronounced "two thousand (and)..." as opposed to the less common "twenty oh...."

Events

January

January 4 – The tallest man-made structure to date, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is officially opened. January 8 – The Togo national football team is involved in an attack in Angola, and as a result withdraws from the Africa Cup of Nations. January 12 – A 7.0-magnitude earthquake occurs in Haiti, devastating the nation's capital, Port-au-Prince. With a confirmed death toll over 230,000 it is one of the deadliest on record.

January 15 – The longest annular solar eclipse of the 3rd millennium occurs.

January 25 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 crashes into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after take-off from Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport, killing all 90 people on-board.

February

February 3 – The sculpture ''L'Homme qui marche I'' by Alberto Giacometti sells in London for £65 million (US$103.7 million), setting a new world record for a work of art sold at auction.

February 12–February 28 – The 2010 Winter Olympics are held in Vancouver and Whistler, Canada.

February 18 – The President of Niger, Tandja Mamadou, is overthrown after a group of soldiers storms the presidential palace and form a ruling junta, the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy headed by ''chef d'escadron'' Salou Djibo. February 27 – An 8.8-magnitude earthquake occurs in Chile, triggering a tsunami over the Pacific and killing 497. The earthquake is one of the largest in recorded history.

March

March 16 – The Kasubi Tombs, Uganda's only cultural World Heritage Site, are destroyed by fire. March 26 – The ''ROKS Cheonan'', a South Korean Navy ship carrying 104 personnel, sinks off the country's west coast, killing 46. In May, an independent investigation blames North Korea, which denies the allegations.

April

April 7 – Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev flees Bishkek amid fierce rioting, sparking a sociopolitical crisis. Former foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva is placed at the head of an interim government as the opposition seizes control. April 10 – The President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, is among 96 killed when their airplane crashes in western Russia. April 13 – A 6.9-magnitude earthquake occurs in Qinghai, China, killing at least 2,000 and injuring more than 10,000. April 14 – Volcanic ash from one of several eruptions beneath Eyjafjallajökull, an ice cap in Iceland, begins to disrupt air traffic across northern and western Europe. April 20 – The Deepwater Horizon oil platform explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers. The resulting Horizon oil spill, one of the largest in history, spreads for several months, damaging the waters and the United States coastline, and prompting international debate and doubt about the practice and procedures of offshore drilling. April 27 – Standard & Poor's downgrades Greece's sovereign credit rating to junk four days after the activation of a €45-billion EU–IMF bailout, triggering the decline of stock markets worldwide and of the Euro's value, and furthering a European sovereign debt crisis.

May

May 2 – The Eurozone and the International Monetary Fund agree to a €110 billion bailout package for Greece. The package involves sharp Greek austerity measures. May 4 – ''Nude, Green Leaves and Bust'' by Pablo Picasso sells in New York for US$106.5 million, setting another new world record for a work of art sold at auction. May 7 – Scientists conducting the Neanderthal genome project announce that they have sequenced enough of the Neanderthal genome to suggest that Neanderthals and humans may have interbred. May 12 – Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashes at runway at Tripoli International Airport in Libya, killing 103 of the 104 people on board. May 19 – Protests in Bangkok, Thailand ends with a bloody military crackdown, killing 91 and more than 2,100 injured.

May 20

Scientists announce that they have created a functional synthetic genome.

Five paintings worth €100 million are stolen from the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

May 22 – Air India Express Flight 812 overshoots the runway at Mangalore International Airport in India, killing 158 and leaving 8 survivors. May 31 – Nine activists are killed in a clash with soldiers when Israeli Navy forces raid and capture a flotilla of ships attempting to break the Gaza blockade.

June

June 9 – Ethnic riots in Kyrgyzstan between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks results in the deaths of hundreds.

June 11–July 11 – The 2010 FIFA World Cup is held in South Africa, and is won by Spain.

July

July 8 – The first 24-hour flight by a solar powered plane is completed by the Solar Impulse. July 25 – Wikileaks, an online publisher of anonymous, covert, and classified material, leaks to the public over 90,000 internal reports about the United States-led involvement in the War in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. July 29 – Heavy monsoon rains begin to cause widespread flooding (pictured) in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Over 1,600 are killed, and more than one million are displaced by the floods.

August

August 10 – The World Health Organization declares the H1N1 influenza pandemic over, saying worldwide flu activity has returned to typical seasonal patterns.

September

October

October 10 – The Netherlands Antilles are dissolved, with the islands being split up and given a new constitutional status. October 13 – Thirty-three miners near Copiapó, Chile, trapped 700 metres underground in a mining accident in San José Mine, are brought back to the surface after surviving for a record 69 days. October 22 – The International Space Station surpasses the record for the longest continuous human occupation of space, having been continuously inhabited since November 2, 2000 (3641 days). October 23 – In preparation for the Seoul summit, finance ministers of the G-20 agree to reform the International Monetary Fund and shift 6% of the voting shares to developing nations and countries with emerging markets. October 25 – An earthquake and consequent tsunami off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, kills over 400 people and leave hundreds missing. October 26–ongoing – Repeated eruptions of Mount Merapi volcano in Central Java, Indonesia, and accompanying pyroclastic flows of scalding gas, pumice, and volcanic ash descending the erupting volcano kill three hundred people and forced hundreds of thousands of residents to evacuate.

November

November 4 – Aero Caribbean Flight 883 crashes in central Cuba, killing all 68 people on board. November 11–November 12 – The G-20 summit is held in Seoul, South Korea. Korea becomes the first non-G8 nation to host a G-20 leaders summit. November 13 – Burmese opposition politician Aung San Suu Kyi is released from her house arrest. November 17 – Researchers at CERN trap 38 antihydrogen atoms for a sixth of a second, marking the first time in history that humans have trapped antimatter.

November 20 – Participants of the 2010 NATO Lisbon summit issued the Lisbon Summit Declaration.

November 21 – Eurozone countries agree to a rescue package for the Republic of Ireland from the European Financial Stability Facility in response to the country's financial crisis. November 22 – A stampede during Bon Om Thook (Khmer Water Festival) celebrations in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, kills 347. November 23 – North Korea shells Yeonpyeong Island, prompting a military response by South Korea. The incident caused an escalation of tension on the Korean Peninsula and prompted widespread international condemnation. The United Nations declared it to be one of the most serious incidents since the end of the Korean War. November 28 – WikiLeaks releases a collection of more than 250,000 American diplomatic cables, including 100,000 marked "secret" or "confidential". November 29 – The European Union agree to an €85 billion rescue deal for Ireland from the European Financial Stability Facility, the International Monetary Fund and bilateral loans from the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden. November 29–December 10 – The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference is held in Cancún, Mexico. Also referred to as the 16th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 16), it served too as the 6th meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 6).

December

December 21 – The first total lunar eclipse to occur on the day of the Northern winter solstice and Southern summer solstice since 1638 takes place.

Deaths

January

January 4

* Johan Ferrier, 1st President of Suriname (b. 1910)

* Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Japanese dual atomic bomb survivor (b. 1916)

January 9 – Armand Razafindratandra, Malagasy cardinal (b. 1925)

January 11

* Miep Gies, Dutch humanitarian (b. 1909)

* Éric Rohmer, French film director (b. 1920)

January 12 – Zilda Arns, Brazilian pediatrician and aid worker (b. 1934)

January 13 – Teddy Pendergrass, American R&B; and soul singer (b. 1950)

January 15 – Marshall Warren Nirenberg, American biologist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1927)

January 17

* Jyoti Basu, Indian politician (b. 1914)

* Erich Segal, American author, screenwriter, and educator (b. 1937)

January 18 – Kate McGarrigle, Canadian folk singer (b. 1946)

January 19 – Panajot Pano, Albanian footballer (b. 1939)

January 22

* Iskandar of Johor, 8th King of Malaysia (b. 1932)

* Jean Simmons, British actress (b. 1929)

January 25 – Ali Hassan al-Majid, Iraqi politician and military commander (b. 1941)

January 27

* Zelda Rubinstein, American actress and human rights activist (b. 1933)

* J. D. Salinger, American author (b. 1919)

* Howard Zinn, American historian (b. 1922)

February

February 1 – Steingrímur Hermannsson, 19th Prime Minister of Iceland (b. 1928)

February 6 – John Dankworth, British jazz musician and composer (b. 1927)

February 7 – André Kolingba, 4th President of the Central African Republic (b. 1936)

February 10 – Charlie Wilson, American politician (b. 1933)

February 11 – Alexander McQueen, British fashion designer (b. 1969)

February 14 – Dick Francis, British author and jockey (b. 1920)

February 17 – Kathryn Grayson, American singer (b. 1922)

February 18 – Ariel Ramírez, Argentine composer (b. 1921)

February 20 – Alexander Haig, 59th United States Secretary of State (b. 1924)

March

March 3 – Michael Foot, British politician (b. 1913)

March 4 – Vladislav Ardzinba, Soviet-born politician (b. 1945)

March 10

* Corey Haim, Canadian actor (b. 1971)

* Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, Egyptian Muslim cleric (b. 1928)

March 12 – Miguel Delibes, Spanish author and journalist (b. 1920)

March 14 – Peter Graves, American actor (b. 1926)

March 20 – Girija Prasad Koirala, Nepalese politician (b. 1925)

March 21 – Wolfgang Wagner, German festival director (b. 1919)

March 22

* James Black, British pharmacologist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1924)

* Valentina Tolkunova, Soviet and Russian singer (b. 1946)

March 24 – Robert Culp, American actor, screenwriter and director (b. 1930)

March 27 – Vasily Smyslov, Soviet-Russian chess grandmaster (b. 1921)

March 28

* Herb Ellis, American jazz guitarist (b. 1921)

* June Havoc, Canadian-born American actress (b. 1912)

March 30 – Martin Sandberger, German army officer (b. 1911)

April

April 1 – John Forsythe, American actor (b. 1918)

April 3 – Eugene Terre'Blanche, South African politician and white supremacist (b. 1941)

April 5 – Vitali Sevastyanov, Soviet cosmonaut (b. 1935)

April 6 – Corin Redgrave, British actor and political activist (b. 1939)

April 8

* Malcolm McLaren, British musician and manager (b. 1946)

* Abel Muzorewa, Zimbabwean politician (b. 1925)

April 10

* Ryszard Kaczorowski, Polish statesman (b. 1919)

* Lech Kaczyński, President of Poland (b. 1949)

April 14 – Peter Steele, American musician (b. 1962)

April 16 – Tomáš Špidlík, Czech cardinal (b. 1919)

April 19 – Guru, American rapper (b. 1966)

April 21 – Juan Antonio Samaranch, Spanish sports official (b. 1920)

April 25 – Alan Sillitoe, British writer (b. 1928)

April 30 – Paul Mayer, German cardinal (b. 1911)

May

May 2 – Lynn Redgrave, British actress (b. 1943)

May 4 – Luigi Poggi, Italian cardinal (b. 1917)

May 5

* Giulietta Simionato, Italian opera singer (b. 1910)

* Umaru Yar'Adua, President of Nigeria (b. 1951)

May 8 – Andor Lilienthal, Hungarian chess grandmaster (b. 1911)

May 9 – Lena Horne, American singer and actress (b. 1917)

May 10 – Frank Frazetta, American artist (b. 1928)

May 15 – Besian Idrizaj, Austrian footballer (b. 1987)

May 16

* Ronnie James Dio, American musician (b. 1942)

* Oswaldo López Arellano, Honduran two-time former president (b. 1921)

* Hank Jones, American pianist (b. 1918)

May 17

* Bobbejaan Schoepen, Belgian singer (b. 1925)

* Khattiya Sawasdipol, Thai army general (b. 1951)

* Yvonne Loriod, French pianist (b. 1924)

May 18 – Edoardo Sanguineti, Italian writer (b. 1930)

May 22 – Martin Gardner, American science author (b. 1914)

May 24 – Paul Gray, American musician (b. 1972)

May 28 – Gary Coleman, American actor (b. 1968)

May 29 – Dennis Hopper, American actor and film director (b. 1936)

May 31 – Louise Bourgeois, French-born American sculptor (b. 1911)

June

June 1 – Andrey Voznesensky, Soviet-Russian poet (b. 1933)

June 2 – Giuseppe Taddei, Italian baritone (b. 1916)

June 3

* Vladimir Arnold, Soviet-Russian mathematician (b. 1937)

* Rue McClanahan, American actress (b. 1934)

June 9 – Marina Semyonova, Russian ballerina (b. 1908)

June 10 – Sigmar Polke, German painter and photographer (b. 1941)

June 14 – Leonid Kizim, Soviet-Ukrainian cosmonaut (b. 1941)

June 16 – Ronald Neame, British cinematographer, producer and director (b. 1911)

June 18

* Marcel Bigeard, French military officer (b. 1916)

* José Saramago, Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1922)

June 19 – Manute Bol, Sudanese basketball player (b. 1962)

June 23 – Mohammed Mzali, former Prime Minister of Tunisia (b. 1925)

June 26 – Algirdas Brazauskas, 9th President of Lithuania (b. 1932)

June 28 – Robert Byrd, American politician (b. 1917)

July

July 2 – Beryl Bainbridge, British novelist (b. 1934)

July 3 – Abu Daoud, Palestinian militia commander (b. 1937)

July 4 – Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanese spiritual leader (b. 1935)

July 5

* Cesare Siepi, Italian opera singer (b. 1923)

* Nasr Abu Zayd, Egyptian Qur'anic theologian (b. 1943)

July 12 – Harvey Pekar, American comic book writer (b. 1939)

July 14 – Charles Mackerras, Australian conductor (b. 1925)

July 17 – Bernard Giraudeau, French actor and film director (b. 1947)

July 21 – Luis Corvalán, Chilean politician (b. 1916)

July 24 – Alex Higgins, Northern Irish snooker player (b. 1949)

August

August 5 – Godfrey Binaisa, 5th President of Uganda (b. 1920)

August 6 – Tony Judt, British historian (b. 1948)

August 7 – Bruno Cremer, French actor (b. 1929)

August 8 – Patricia Neal, American actress (b. 1926)

August 9 – Ted Stevens, American politician (b. 1923)

August 10 – Antonio Pettigrew, American athlete (b. 1967)

August 12 – Guido de Marco, 6th President of Malta (b. 1931)

August 16 – Nicola Cabibbo, Italian physicist (b. 1935)

August 17 – Francesco Cossiga, 63rd Prime Minister and 8th President of Italy (b. 1928)

August 18 – Carlos Hugo of Bourbon-Parma, Spanish aristrocrat (b. 1930)

August 22 – Stjepan Bobek, Yugoslav footballer (b. 1923)

August 23 – Satoshi Kon, Japanese anime film director (b. 1963)

August 26 – Raimon Panikkar, Spanish theologian (b. 1918)

August 27 – Anton Geesink, Dutch judoka (b. 1934)

August 28 – Sinan Hasani, 10th President of Yugoslavia (b. 1922)

August 30

* Alain Corneau, French filmmaker (b. 1943)

* Francisco Varallo, Argentine footballer (b. 1910)

August 31 – Laurent Fignon, French road bicycle racer (b. 1960)

September

September 9 – Bent Larsen, Danish chess grandmaster (b. 1935)

September 11 – Kevin McCarthy, American actor (b. 1914)

September 12 – Claude Chabrol, French film director (b. 1930)

September 22 – Eddie Fisher, American entertainer and singer (b. 1928)

September 24 – Gennady Yanayev, Soviet politician (b. 1937)

September 26 – Gloria Stuart, American actress (b. 1910)

September 28 – Arthur Penn, American film director (b. 1922)

September 29

* Georges Charpak, French physicist (b. 1924)

* Tony Curtis, American actor (b. 1925)

September 30 – Stephen J. Cannell, American writer and television producer (b. 1941)

October

October 4 – Norman Wisdom, British actor and comedian (b. 1915)

October 7 – Milka Planinc, former Prime Minister of Yugoslavia (b. 1924)

October 9 – Maurice Allais, French economist (b. 1911)

October 10

* Solomon Burke, American soul musician (b. 1940)

* Hwang Jang-yop, North Korean politician and defector (b. 1923)

October 11 – Joan Sutherland, Australian opera singer (b. 1926)

October 14 – Benoît Mandelbrot, French-American mathematician (b. 1924)

October 19 – Tom Bosley, American actor (b. 1927)

October 20 – Farooq Leghari, 9th President of Pakistan (b. 1940)

October 23 – David Thompson, 6th Prime Minister of Barbados (b. 1961)

October 25 – Gregory Issacs, Jamaican musician (b. 1951)

October 27 – Néstor Kirchner, 54th President of Argentina (b. 1950)

October 28 – Jonathan Motzfeldt, 1st Prime Minister of Greenland (b. 1938)

October 30 – Harry Mulisch, Dutch writer (b. 1927)

November

November 2 – Rudolf Barshai, Soviet-Russian conductor and violist (b. 1924)

November 3 – Viktor Chernomyrdin, 31st Prime Minister of Russia (b. 1938)

November 5

* Jill Clayburgh, American actress (b. 1944)

* Hajo Herrmann, German fighter pilot and lawyer (b. 1913)

November 10 – Dino De Laurentiis, Italian film producer (b. 1919)

November 12 – Henryk Górecki, Polish composer (b. 1933)

November 13 – Luis García Berlanga, Spanish film director (b. 1921)

November 27 – Irvin Kershner, American film director (b. 1923)

November 28 – Leslie Nielsen, Canadian-American actor (b. 1926)

November 29 – Bella Akhmadulina, Soviet-Russian poet (b. 1937)

December

December 12 – Tom Walkinshaw, British racing car driver and team owner (b. 1946)

December 13 – Richard Holbrooke, American diplomat (b. 1941)

December 15 – Blake Edwards, American film director (b. 1922)

December 17 – Captain Beefheart, American musician (b. 1941)

December 21 – Enzo Bearzot, Italian footballer and coach (b. 1927)

December 25 – Carlos Andrés Pérez, 55th President of Venezuela (b. 1922)

December 26

* Salvador Jorge Blanco, 48th President of the Dominican Republic (b. 1926)

* Teena Marie, American singer-songwriter (b. 1956)

Nobel Prizes

Chemistry – Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki

Economics – Peter A. Diamond, Dale T. Mortensen and Christopher A. Pissarides

Literature – Mario Vargas Llosa

Peace – Liu Xiaobo

Physics – Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov

Physiology or Medicine – Robert G. Edwards

Major religious holidays

January 7 (January 6 in Armenia) – Orthodox Christmas.

February 1 – Imbolc, a Cross-quarter day (Celebrated on February 2 in some places).

February 2 – Candlemas commemorating the Purification of the Virgin. It marks the liturgical end of the Christmas season.

February 16 – Shrove Tuesday / Mardi Gras, end of Mardi Gras / Carnival season.

February 17 – Ash Wednesday (first day of Lent).

March 1 – Holi.

March 20 (March 21 in the Far East) – Vernal Equinox, also known as Nowruz.

March 24 – Rama Navami.

March 29 (evening) – Passover.

March 30 – Hanuman Jayanti.

April 4 – Easter (''Western'' and ''Orthodox'').

May 1 – Beltane, a Cross-quarter day.

May 18–May 19 – Shavuot.

August 1 – Lammas, a Cross-quarter day.

August 11 – Ramadan begins.

August 24 – Raksha Bandhan.

September 2 – Krishna Janmashtami.

September 8–September 10 – Rosh Hashanah.

September 10 – Eid ul-Fitr.

September 17–September 18 – Yom Kippur.

September 22–September 29/September 30 – Sukkot.

September 23 – Autumnal Equinox, also known as Mabon.

November 5 – Diwali.

November 16–November 19 – Eid al-Adha.

December 25 – Western Christmas.

In fiction

References

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name	David Foster Wallace
birth date	February 21, 1962
birth place	Ithaca, New York
death date	September 12, 2008
death place	Claremont, California
occupation	Novelist, short story writer, essayist, college professor
nationality	United States
period	1987–2008
genre	Literary fiction, nonfiction
movement	Postmodern literature, hysterical realism, metamodernism
notableworks	''Infinite Jest''
influences	Don Delillo, William Gaddis, Cynthia Ozick, Manuel Puig, David Lynch
influenced	Neal Stephenson
website	}}

David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He was widely known for his 1996 novel ''Infinite Jest'', which ''Time'' included in its All-Time 100 Greatest Novels list (covering the period 1923–2006).

''Los Angeles Times'' book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years".

Wallace's unfinished novel, ''The Pale King'', was published in 2011. A biography of Wallace by D. T. Max is projected for publication in 2012.

Biography

Personal

Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, to James Donald Wallace and Sally Foster Wallace. In his early childhood, Wallace lived in Champaign, Illinois. In fourth grade, he moved to Urbana and attended Yankee Ridge school and Urbana High School. As an adolescent, Wallace was a regionally ranked junior tennis player.

He attended his father's alma mater, Amherst College, and majored in English and philosophy, with a focus on modal logic and mathematics. His philosophy senior thesis on modal logic, titled ''Richard Taylor's 'Fatalism' and the Semantics of Physical Modality'' (described in James Ryerson's 2008 ''New York Times'' essay "Consider the Philosopher") was awarded the Gail Kennedy Memorial Prize. His other senior thesis, in English, would later become his first novel. Wallace graduated ''summa cum laude'' for both theses in 1985, and in 1987 received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arizona.

Though he made little mention of it in his writing, Wallace belonged to a church wherever he lived.

Family

Wallace's father was James D. Wallace, who accepted a teaching job at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the fall of 1962 after finishing his graduate course work in philosophy at Cornell University. He received his PhD from Cornell in 1963 and is now Emeritus Professor at Urbana-Champaign. Wallace's mother, Sally Foster Wallace, attended graduate school in English Composition at the University of Illinois and became a professor of English at Parkland College—a community college in Champaign—where she won a national Professor of the Year award in 1996. Wallace's younger sister, Amy Wallace Havens of Tucson, Arizona, has practiced law since 2005.

In the early 1990s, Wallace had a relationship with the poet and memoirist Mary Karr (''The Liars' Club''). Wallace married painter Karen L. Green on December 27, 2004. Dogs played an important role in Wallace's life; he was very close to his two dogs, Bella and Warner, had spoken of opening a dog shelter, and according to Jonathan Franzen "had a predilection for dogs who'd been abused, and [were] unlikely to find other owners who were going to be patient enough for them."

Death

Wallace committed suicide by hanging himself on September 12, 2008. In an interview with ''The New York Times'', Wallace's father reported that Wallace had suffered from depression for more than 20 years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive. When he experienced severe side effects from the medication, Wallace attempted to wean himself from his primary antidepressant, phenelzine. On his doctor's advice, Wallace stopped taking the medication in June 2007, and the depression returned. Wallace received other treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy. When he returned to phenelzine, he found it had lost its effectiveness. In the months before his death, his depression became severe.

Numerous gatherings were held to honor Wallace after his death, including memorial services at Pomona College, Amherst College, University of Arizona, and on October 23, 2008, at NYU—the latter with speakers including his sister, Amy Wallace Havens; his agent, Bonnie Nadell; Gerry Howard, the editor of his first two books; Colin Harrison, editor at ''Harper's Magazine''; Michael Pietsch, the editor of ''Infinite Jest'' and Wallace's later work; Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at ''The New Yorker''; as well as authors Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith, George Saunders, Mark Costello, Donald Antrim, and Jonathan Franzen.

Writing and other media

Career

Wallace's first novel, 1987's ''The Broom of the System'', garnered national attention and critical praise. Caryn James of ''The New York Times'' called it a successful "manic, human, flawed extravaganza", "emerging straight from the excessive tradition of Stanley Elkin's ''Franchiser'', Thomas Pynchon's ''V.'', John Irving's ''World According to Garp''." Wallace moved to Boston, Massachusetts, for graduate school in philosophy at Harvard University, but soon abandoned it. In 1991 he began teaching literature as an adjunct professor at Emerson College in Boston.

In 1992, at the behest of colleague and supporter Steven Moore, Wallace applied for and won a position in the English department at Illinois State University. He had begun work on his second novel, ''Infinite Jest'', in 1991, and submitted a draft to his editor in December 1993. After the publication of excerpts throughout 1995, the book was published in 1996.

Wallace published short fiction in ''Might'', ''GQ'', ''Playboy'', ''The Paris Review'', ''Harper's Magazine'', ''Mid-American Review'', ''Conjunctions'', ''Esquire'', ''Open City'', ''Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', ''The New Yorker'', and ''Science''.

In 1997, Wallace received a MacArthur Fellowship, as well as the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, awarded by editors of ''The Paris Review'' for one of the stories in ''Brief Interviews''—"Brief Interviews with Hideous Men #6"—which had appeared in the magazine.

In 2002, he moved to Claremont, California, to become the first Roy E. Disney Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Pomona College. He taught one or two undergraduate courses per semester, and focused on his writing.

In May 2005, Wallace delivered the commencement address to the graduating class at Kenyon College. The speech was published as a book in 2009 under the title ''This Is Water''.

Bonnie Nadell was Wallace's literary agent through his entire career. Michael Pietsch was his editor on ''Infinite Jest''.

In March 2009, Little, Brown and Company announced that it would publish the manuscript of an unfinished novel, ''The Pale King'', that Wallace was working on at the time of his death. ''The Pale King'' was pieced together by editor Michael Pietsch from pages and notes the author left behind. Several excerpts from it were published in the ''New Yorker'' and other magazines. ''The Pale King'' was published on April 15, 2011, and received generally positive reviews.

In March 2010, it was announced that Wallace's personal papers and archives – drafts of books, stories, essays, poems, letters, and research, including the handwritten notes for ''Infinite Jest'' – had been purchased by the University of Texas at Austin and will reside at the University's Harry Ransom Center.

Themes and styles

Wallace's fiction is often concerned with irony. His essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction", originally published in the small-circulation ''Review of Contemporary Fiction'' in 1993, proposes that television has an ironic influence on fiction writing, and urges literary authors to eschew TV's shallow rebelliousness: "I want to convince you that irony, poker-faced silence, and fear of ridicule are distinctive of those features of contemporary U.S. culture (of which cutting-edge fiction is a part) that enjoy any significant relation to the television whose weird pretty hand has my generation by the throat. I'm going to argue that irony and ridicule are entertaining and effective, and that at the same time they are agents of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture, and that for aspiring fictionists they pose terrifically vexing problems". Wallace used many forms of irony, but focused on individuals' continued longing for earnest, unself-conscious experience and communication in a media-saturated society. Literary critic Adam Kirsch said that Wallace's "self-conscious earnestness" and "hostility to irony defined a literary generation."

Wallace's novels often combine various writing modes or voices, and incorporate jargon and vocabulary (sometimes invented) from a wide variety of fields. His writing featured self-generated abbreviations and acronyms, long multi-clause sentences, and a notable use of explanatory footnotes and endnotes—often nearly as expansive as the text proper. He used endnotes extensively in ''Infinite Jest'' and footnotes in "Octet" as well as in the great majority of his nonfiction after 1996. On the ''Charlie Rose'' show in 1997, Wallace claimed that the notes were used to disrupt the linearity of the narrative, to reflect his perception of reality without jumbling the entire structure. He suggested that he could have instead jumbled up the sentences, "but then no one would read it."

According to Wallace, "fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being," and he expressed a desire to write "morally passionate, passionately moral fiction" that could help readers "become less alone inside". In his Kenyon College commencement address, he describes the human condition of daily crises and chronic disillusionment and warns against solipsism, invoking compassion, mindfulness, and existentialism:

Nonfiction work

Wallace covered Senator John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign and had been commissioned shortly before his death to write a story about Barack Obama. He wrote about the September 11 attacks for ''Rolling Stone''; cruise ships (in what became the title essay of his first nonfiction book), state fairs, and tornadoes for ''Harper's Magazine''; the US Open tournament for ''TENNIS Magazine''; the director David Lynch and the pornography industry for ''Premiere'' magazine; the tennis player Michael Joyce for ''Esquire''; the special-effects film industry for Waterstone's magazine; conservative talk radio host John Ziegler for ''The Atlantic Monthly''; and a Maine lobster festival for ''Gourmet'' magazine. He also reviewed books in several genres for the ''Los Angeles Times'', ''The Washington Post'', ''The New York Times'', and ''The Philadelphia Inquirer''. In the November 2007 issue of ''The Atlantic'', which commemorated the magazine's 150th anniversary, Wallace was among the authors, artists, politicians and others who wrote short pieces on "the future of the American idea".

Other media

Twelve of the interviews from ''Brief Interviews With Hideous Men'' were adapted into a stage play in 2000, the first theatrical adaptation of Wallace's work. The play, ''Hideous Men'', adapted and directed by Dylan McCullough, premiered at the New York International Fringe Festival in August 2000.

A filmed adaptation of ''Brief Interviews'', directed by John Krasinski, was released in 2009 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film stars Julianne Nicholson and an ensemble cast including Christopher Meloni, Rashida Jones, Timothy Hutton, Josh Charles, Will Forte and Corey Stoll.

The short story "Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko" from ''Brief Interviews With Hideous Men'' was adapted by composer Eric Moe into a 50-minute operatic piece, to be performed with accompanying video projections. The piece was described as having "subversively inscribed classical music into pop culture", but received tepid reviews overall.

Awards

Inclusion of "Good Old Neon" in ''The O. Henry Prize Stories 2002''

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, 1997–2002

Lannan Foundation Residency Fellow, July–August 2000

Named to Usage Panel, ''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language'' 4th Edition et seq., 1999

Inclusion of "The Depressed Person" in Prize Stories 1999: The O. Henry Awards

Illinois State University, Outstanding University Researcher, 1998 and 1999

Aga Khan Prize for Fiction for the story "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men #6", 1997

''Time'' magazine's Best Books of the Year (Fiction), 1996

Salon Book Award (Fiction), 1996

Lannan Literary Award (Fiction), 1996

Inclusion of "Here and There" in Prize Stories 1989: The O. Henry Awards

Whiting Writers' Award, 1987

Selected bibliography

Novels

''The Broom of the System'' (1987)

''Infinite Jest'' (1996)

''The Pale King'' (2011) (unfinished)

Short story collections

''Girl with Curious Hair'' (1989) (published in Europe as ''Westward the Course of the Empire Takes Its Way'')

''Brief Interviews with Hideous Men'' (1999)

''Oblivion: Stories'' (2004)

Nonfiction

''Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race In the Urban Present'' (1990), coauthored with Mark Costello

''A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again'' (essays) (1997)

''Up, Simba!'' (2000)

''Everything and More'' (2003)

''Consider the Lobster'' (essays) (2005)

''McCain's Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express with John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope'' (paperback reprint of ''Up, Simba!'') (2008)

''This Is Water'' (2009)

''Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will,'' Eds. S. Cahn and M. Eckert, Columbia University Press (2010).

Further reading

Benzon, Kiki. "Darkness Legible, Unquiet Lines: Mood Disorders in the Fiction of David Foster Wallace." ''Creativity, Madness and Civilization.'' Ed. Richard Pine. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007: 187–198.

Boswell, Marshall. ''Understanding David Foster Wallace''. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003. ISBN 1-57003-517-2

Bresnan, Mark. "The Work of Play in David Foster Wallace's ''Infinite Jest''." ''Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction'' 50:1 (2008), 51–68.

Burn, Stephen. "Generational Succession and a Source for the Title of David Foster Wallace's ''The Broom of the System''." ''Notes on Contemporary Literature'' 33.2 (2003), 9–11.

Burn, Stephen. ''David Foster Wallace's'' Infinite Jest'': A Reader's Guide''. New York, London: Continuum, 2003 (= Continuum Contemporaries) ISBN 0-8264-1477-X

Carlisle, Greg. "Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace's ''Infinite Jest''." Austin, L.A.: Sideshow Media Group Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9761465-3-7

Cioffi, Frank Louis. "An Anguish Becomes Thing: Narrative as Performance in David Foster Wallace's ''Infinite Jest''." ''Narrative'' 8.2 (2000), 161–181.

Delfino, Andrew Steven. "Becoming the New Man in Post-Postmodernist Fiction: Portrayals of Masculinities in David Foster Wallace's ''Infinite Jest'' and Chuck Palahniuk's ''Fight Club''. MA Thesis, Georgia State University.

Dowling, William, and Bell, Robert. A Reader's Companion to Infinite Jest. Xlibris, 2004. ISBN 1-4134-8446-8 ()

Esposito, Scott, et al. Who Was David Foster Wallace? A Symposium on the Writing of David Foster Wallace

Ewijk, Petrus van. "'I' and the 'Other': The relevance of Wittgenstein, Buber and Levinas for an understanding of AA's Recovery Program in David Foster Wallace's ''Infinite Jest''." ''English Text Construction'' 2.1 (2009), 132–145.

Goerlandt, Iannis and Luc Herman. "David Foster Wallace." ''Post-war Literatures in English: A Lexicon of Contemporary Authors'' 56 (2004), 1–16; A1-2, B1-2.

Goerlandt, Iannis. "Fußnoten und Performativität bei David Foster Wallace. Fallstudien." ''Am Rande bemerkt. Anmerkungspraktiken in literarischen Texten.'' Ed. Bernhard Metz & Sabine Zubarik. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2008: 387–408.

Goerlandt, Iannis. "'Put the book down and slowly walk away': Irony and David Foster Wallace's ''Infinite Jest''." ''Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction'' 47.3 (2006), 309–328.

Goerlandt, Iannis. "'Still steaming as its many arms extended': Pain in David Foster Wallace's ''Incarnations of Burned Children''." ''Sprachkunst'' 37.2 (2006), 297–308.

Harris, Jan Ll.'Addiction and the Societies of Control: David Foster Wallace's ''Infinite Jest'''', paper delivered at ''Figuring Addictions/Rethinking Consumption'' conference, Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University, April 4–5, 2002

Harris, Michael. "A Sometimes Funny Book Supposedly about Infinity: A Review of ''Everything and More''." ''Notices of the AMS'' 51.6 (2004), 632–638. (full pdf-text)

Holland, Mary K. "'The Art's Heart's Purpose': Braving the Narcissistic Loop of David Foster Wallace's ''Infinite Jest''." ''Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction'' 47.3 (2006), 218–242.

Jacobs, Tim. "The Fight: Considering David Foster Wallace Considering You". ''Rain Taxi Review of Books.'' Online Edition, Part Two. Winter 2009.

Jacobs, Timothy. "The Brothers Incandenza: Translating Ideology in Fyodor Dostoevsky's ''The Brothers Karamazov'' and David Foster Wallace's ''Infinite Jest''." ''Contemporary Literary Criticism'' Vol. 271. Ed. Jeffrey Hunter. New York: Gale, 2009.

Jacobs, Timothy. "The Brothers Incandenza: Translating Ideology in Fyodor Dostoevsky's ''The Brothers Karamazov'' and David Foster Wallace's ''Infinite Jest''." ''Texas Studies in Literature and Language'' 49.3 (2007): 265–292.

Jacobs, Timothy. "American Touchstone: The Idea of Order in Gerard Manley Hopkins and David Foster Wallace." ''Comparative Literature Studies'' 38.3 (2001): 215–231.

Jacobs, Timothy. "David Foster Wallace's ''The Broom of the System''." Ed. Alan Hedblad. ''Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction''. Detroit: Gale Research Press, 2001. 41–50.

Jacobs, Timothy. "David Foster Wallace's ''Infinite Jest''." ''The Explicator'' 58.3 (2000): 172–175.

Kelly, Adam. "David Foster Wallace: the Death of the Author and the Birth of a Discipline." ''Irish Journal of American Studies Online'' 2 (2010). Link.

LeClair, Tom. "The Prodigious Fiction of Richard Powers, William T. Vollmann, and David Foster Wallace." ''Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction'' 38.1 (1996), 12–37.

Lipsky, David. ''Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace''. New York: Broadway, 2010.

Mason, Wyatt. "Don't like it? You don't have to play." ''London Review of Books'' 26.22 (2004). http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n22/maso02_.html

Morris, David. "Lived Time and Absolute Knowing: Habit and Addiction from ''Infinite Jest'' to the ''Phenomenology of Spirit''." ''Clio: A Journal of Literature, History and the Philosophy of History'' 30 (2001), 375–415.

Nichols, Catherine. "Dialogizing Postmodern Carnival: David Foster Wallace's ''Infinite Jest''." ''Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction'' 43.1 (2001), 3–16.

Rother, James. "Reading and Riding the Post-Scientific Wave. The Shorter Fiction of David Foster Wallace." ''Review of Contemporary Fiction'' 13.2 (1993), 216–234. ISBN 1-56478-123-2

Tysdal, Dan. "Inarticulation and the Figure of Enjoyment: Raymond Carver's Minimalism Meets David Foster Wallace's 'A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life.'" ''Wascana Review of Contemporary Poetry and Short Fiction'' 38.1 (2003), 66–83.

See also

List of 20th-century writers

References

External links

Sources

Reprint of ''Consider the Lobster'', 2004 essay on lobsters for Gourmet magazine

New York Times "Play Magazine" article on Roger Federer, "Federer as Religious Experience"

Wallace pieces for ''Harper's Magazine''

Reprint of ''Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage'', 2001 essay for ''Harper's'' on usage dictionaries and Standard Written English

Biographical

"An Appraisal: Writer Mapped the Mythic and the Mundane", by Michiko Kakutani, ''The New York Times'', September 14, 2008

"On David Foster Wallace", by Dustin Luke Nelson, from ''Guernica Magazine'', September 14, 2008.

Modernism/modernity 16:1 (January 2009), "In Memoriam David Foster Wallace," 1–24. Featuring tributes from Steven Moore, Dave Eggers, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Marshall Boswell, Michael North, Stephen J. Burn, and Brendan Beirne.

"David Foster Wallace, 1962–2008", by David Gates, ''Newsweek'', September 14, 2008.

"The Unfinished" by D.T. Max, The New Yorker, March 9, 2009.

"Everything & More: The Work of David Foster Wallace" by Malcolm Knox, The Monthly November, 2008.

Wyatt Mason: "Smarter than You Think" The New York Review of Books

"David Foster Wallace and the Velveteen Rabbit" Identity Theory, August, 2011.

Interviews

Charlie Rose Show: An interview with Wallace following the publication of Infinite Jest and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Mar 27, 1997

Charlie Rose Show: A roundtable discussion on fiction with Wallace, Jonathan Franzen and Mark Leyner, May 17, 1996

This American Life Episode 160 broadcast May 19, 2000 "Character Assassination" Act 2 'Sonny Takes a Fall' – (19 minute radio where David Foster Wallace "reports on a turning point in 2000's Presidential primaries: the moment when John McCain failed to respond well to an attack by George Bush". Description of broadcast from thislife.org)

"David Foster Wallace: A Profile" – (by Bill Katovsky)

David Foster Wallace on Bookworm, Link to a set of lengthy radio interviews David Foster Wallace gave to KCRW's Bookworm over a period of ten years. The first is from April 11, 1996; the last March 2, 2006.

Portals

THE HOWLING FANTODS! – David Foster Wallace: News, Info, Links

''Infinite Jest'' Wiki

The Infinite Summer project

''Pomona College's David Foster Wallace Wiki

Fan art tribute

FOREVER DFW – A collection of art and other material in memory of David Foster Wallace

''A Failed Entertainment'': Film and art exhibit based on the James O. Incandenza Filmography from ''Infinite Jest''

Incandenza Filmography interpretations and other ''Infinite Jest''-inspired works online: "Infinite Jest IV", "Zero Gravity Tea Ceremony", "The Medusa v. The Odalisque", "The Cold Majesty of the Numb", "Kinds of Light", "Baby Pictures of Famous Dicatators 2: Eschatong", "Good-Looking Men In Small Clever Rooms That Utilize Every Centimeter Of Available Space With Mind-Boggling Efficiency", "Cage - Planar Version", "Various Small Flames", "The Exhibit and the Cage", "Après-Garde Film", "For Infinite Jest", "Sixty Minutes More or Less with Madame Psychosis", "Hal at Age 4", "Poor Yorick Entertainment" poster art

Category:American Christians Category:American essayists Category:American novelists Category:American short story writers Category:Amherst College alumni Category:Illinois State University faculty Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:People from California Category:People from Champaign County, Illinois Category:People from Ithaca, New York Category:Pomona College faculty Category:Postmodern writers Category:Suicides by hanging in California Category:University of Arizona alumni Category:Writers from California Category:Writers from Illinois Category:Writers from New York Category:Writers who committed suicide Category:1962 births Category:2008 deaths

ca:David Foster Wallace da:David Foster Wallace de:David Foster Wallace es:David Foster Wallace fa:دیوید فاستر والاس fr:David Foster Wallace it:David Foster Wallace he:דייוויד פוסטר וולאס la:David Foster Wallace nl:David Foster Wallace ja:デヴィッド・フォスター・ウォレス no:David Foster Wallace pms:David Foster Wallace pl:David Foster Wallace pt:David Foster Wallace ru:Уоллес, Дэвид Фостер sh:David Foster Wallace fi:David Foster Wallace sv:David Foster Wallace tr:David Foster Wallace

name	David Foster
background	non_performing_personnel
birth name	David Walter Foster
birth date	November 01, 1949
birth place	Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
instrument	Piano, keyboards, French horn, synthesizer
genre	Pop, R&B;, classical, gospel
occupation	Record producer, musician, composer, songwriter, arranger
years active	1971–present
label	Reprise/143, Atlantic
associated acts	Skylark, Attitudes, Airplay, Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks
website	davidfoster.com }}

David Walter Foster, OC, OBC (born November 1, 1949), is a Canadian musician, record producer, composer, singer, songwriter, and arranger, noted for discovering singers such as Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, and Charice Pempengco; and for producing some of the most successful artists in the world.

Career

Throughout his career, he has produced recordings for a wide range of musical artists, including Bryan Adams, Tamia, Christina Aguilera, The Bee Gees, Andrea Bocelli, Boz Scaggs, Mariah Carey, Chicago, Destiny's Child, Neil Diamond, Céline Dion, Earth Wind and Fire, Gloria Estefan, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Chaka Khan, Beyonce Knowles, Kenny Loggins, Madonna, Olivia Newton-John, Nsync, Charice Pempengco, Prince, Kenny Rogers, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Shania Twain, and Jackie Evancho.

Foster was a keyboardist for the pop group Skylark discovered by Eirik Wangberg. The band's song “Wildflower” was a top ten hit in 1973.

Together with Jay Graydon he formed the band Airplay, whose album of the same name is often labeled the most important within the Westcoast AOR genre.

He produced debut albums for The Corrs, Michael Bublé, Renee Olstead and Josh Groban, which were released under his own record label, 143 Records, and distributed through Warner Music. Foster helped launch Kevin Sharp's career after the two met through the Make-A-Wish Foundation and he produced David Hayes singing a song by composed by Ed Scheid and Laramy Smith title "Friend".

In 1985, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine named Foster the "master of ... bombastic pop kitsch." That year, Foster composed the score for the film ''St. Elmo's Fire'', including "Love Theme from St. Elmo's Fire" which hit No. 15 in US pop charts (with a remake of a song titled "For just a moment" with vocals by Amy Holland and Donny Gerrard). Another song from the film, "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)", recorded by John Parr hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 7, 1985. The following years, Foster continued turning out occasional film scores, including the Michael J. Fox comedy ''The Secret of My Success'' and the Jodie Foster-Mark Harmon drama ''Stealing Home'', both of which spawned soundtrack albums with prominent Foster-penned contributions. He collaborated with then-wife Linda Thompson on the song "I Have Nothing", sung by Whitney Houston in the 1992 film ''The Bodyguard''. The couple were nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award for Best Song for the song.

He produced Japanese singer Seiko Matsuda's 1988 album "Citron", also arranging and co-writing all the songs on the album, including the number one single "Marrakech".

In 1995 Foster signed a deal with Warner Brothers that enabled him to set up his own boutique label, 143 Records, as a joint venture with Warner. Foster gave the responsibility for running the label to then manager Brian Avnet. One of the label's first signing was little known Irish folk-rock band The Corrs, for whom he produced their debut album. By 1997 Foster had come to the realisation that, in the American market at least, "logo labels" like 143 were in a "bad spot" and as a result Foster sold the label back to Warner and became senior vice-president at the corporation.

Foster, along with Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, composed "The Power of the Dream" as the official song of the 1996 Summer Olympics, with then-wife Thompson providing the lyrics (sung by Céline Dion). He also composed "Winter Games", the theme song for 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta. "Winter Games" is the soundtrack for a fountain show at the Bellagio resort in Las Vegas as well as a fountain show at Sea World Orlando. Also in 2001, he collaborated with Lara Fabian and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra to record the Canadian national anthem, "O Canada", for an English version, a French version, and a bilingual (French/English) version, for a promotion of the Government of Canada. In 2003, Foster won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Music and Lyrics for ''The Concert for World Children's Day''. His song "I Will Be There With You" (sung with Katharine McPhee) is being used by Japan Airlines to promote the introduction of new aircraft to its US flights.

During the 1990s he often performed acts with San Diego vocalist Warren Wiebe, whom he had discovered in the restroom of a hotel bar in 1987. In 1994 he had Wiebe put together a band called Millennium featuring Nita Whitaker and a few session vocalists, but the deal with Foster's record company led to the group's demise. Wiebe was Foster's "mouth" on many of his videos but committed suicide before he could release a solo album.

In 2005, record producer David Foster, his daughter Amy Foster-Gillies and Knowles wrote "Stand Up For Love" as the anthem to the World Children's Day, an annual worldwide event to raise awareness and funds for children causes. Over the past three years, more than $50 million has been raised to benefit Ronald McDonald House Charities and other children's organizations. Destiny's Child lent their voices and support as global ambassadors for the 2005 program.

In 2009 it was revealed that Foster had worked with songwriter Diane Warren to produce records for Whitney Houston's upcoming album. It was then announced that her comeback single would be the Foster-produced "I Didn't Know My Own Strength".

He recently collaborated with American Idol finalist Michael Johns on the re-write of his popular 1980s hit "St Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)."

In July 2011, it was announced that Foster would take the helm of Verve Records under Universal Music and shift the focus of the label from jazz to adult contemporary pop.

Television appearances

In early 1992, the national television station RCTI, David Foster came to Indonesia for the TV show ''David Foster's Twilight Orchestra''.

In early 2001, Foster was in ''Popstars'', a reality series that aired on WB. The series aimed at coming up with the next girl group and eventually became Eden's Crush (featuring Nicole Scherzinger). David Foster and Linda Thompson wrote and produced several songs on their album.

Foster's home life was featured in a Fox staged reality TV show called ''The Princes of Malibu'', in which he attempts to force his two spoiled stepsons, Brandon and Brody Jenner (the children of Thompson and Olympian Bruce Jenner), to straighten their lives up and earn their own way.

In late April 2005, Foster appeared as a special guest on both ''American Idol'' (as a mentor) and ''Nashville Star'' (as a judge) two weeks apart. He was also a judge on ''Celebrity Duets'', a FOX TV show, and appeared on ''Star Tomorrow'', where auditions were held in Los Angeles and New York for undiscovered talent. It aired only one [July 31, 2006] episode on NBC.

In July 2006, Foster made a brief appearance on ''The View'' as Star Jones's vocal coach. In August 2006, he was the musical director for JCPenney Jam: The Concert For American Kids], which aired on CBS and was later released in CD/DVD format. In November 2007, Foster appeared in Oprah's annual "Favorite Things" episode, performing with Josh Groban.

In September 2008, singer Charice joined Foster on ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' with Celine Dion via satellite; and later on October 31, he and Andrea Bocelli appeared on ''Oprah'' again together, where he stated that Bocelli was his "favorite singer on the planet".

In December 2008, Foster was featured in a PBS special titled ''Hitman David Foster & Friends'', a concert featuring live performances by Foster and numerous other performers. Foster was also featured in ''Under the Desert Sky'' in 2006, ''Vivere Live in Tuscany'' in 2007, and the ''My Christmas Special'', in 2009, Andrea Bocelli's three latest PBS Specials. Bocelli also performed during Foster's Hitman special.

In late 2009, he also appeared on a number of TV shows to promote Bocelli's ''My Christmas'' album, which he produced, including ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', ''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'', ''Dr. Phil'', ''The Early Show'' and ''Fox & Friends''. He also made a number of appearances in 2010 with Filipino singer Charice, to promote her album.

Personal life

Foster has been married three times, has five biological daughters, an ex-stepdaughter, and two ex-stepsons. His first marriage was to singer/writer B.J. Cook. She already had a daughter, Tamre Winger, whom he raised. Together, B.J. Cook and Foster had one daughter, Amy Foster (b. July 29, 1973), a songwriter who has collaborated with classic artists such as Andrea Bocelli, Michael Bublé, and Josh Groban.

His second wife was model Rebecca Dyer. They had three daughters: Sara Foster (b. August 24, 1981), Erin Foster (b. August 24, 1983), and Jordan Foster (b. September 1986). As of May 2008, Sara was engaged to tennis player Tommy Haas, and on November 14, 2010, Haas and Foster welcomed a baby girl in Santa Monica, CA. Foster also has a daughter, Allison Jones (b. April 6, 1970), from a previous relationship.

Foster married third wife Linda Thompson on June 27, 1991. The two became a songwriting team, collaborating on several songs including "I Have Nothing," performed by Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard, and "Grown-Up Christmas List." Thompson filed for divorce Monday July 11, 2005, the day after her short-lived reality series, ''The Princes of Malibu'' premiered. Thompson is the mother of Brody Jenner and Brandon Jenner from her previous marriage to former Olympian Bruce Jenner.

Foster's sister, producer Jaymes Foster, is the mother of Clay Aiken's son Parker Foster Aiken.

David's cousin, Billy Foster, died in a race car accident in 1967.

In 1992, David Foster was driving on the Pacific Coast Highway when his car struck actor Ben Vereen, who had been on the road because he had crashed his car and was in a daze. Despite being thrown 90 feet, Vereen survived. Vereen also went on record to say that it probably saved his life: he had a serious drinking problem caused by the death of his daughter.

Discography

In addition to the numerous albums he has produced, the following are Foster's own solo or band works:

1972: ''Skylark'' (self-titled)

1974: ''2'' Skylark

1976: ''Attitudes'' (self-titled)

1977: ''Good News'' Attitudes

1980: ''Airplay'' (self-titled)

1983: ''The Best of Me''

1986: ''David Foster'' (self-titled)

1988: ''The Symphony Sessions''

1989: ''Time Passing''

1990: ''River of Love''

1991: ''Rechordings''

1992: ''A Touch Of David Foster''

1993: ''The Christmas Album''

1994: ''Love Lights The World''

2000: ''The Best Of Me: A Collection of David Foster’s Greatest Works''

2001: ''O Canada'' (with Lara Fabian)

2002: ''Love Stories''

2003: ''Teko’s Theme - with Nita Whitaker''

2004: ''The Best Of Me - Original Recording Remastered''

2008: ''Hitman: David Foster and Friends''

2010: ''The Magic of David Foster & Friends''

2011: ''Hitman Returns: David Foster and Friends''

Singles

1985: "Love Theme From St. Elmo's Fire (For Just a Moment)" (US #15)

1986: "The Best of Me" (Duet with Olivia Newton-John) (US #80)

1988: "Winter Games (Can't You Feel It)" - Official theme song for the Calgary 1988 Winter Olympics (US #85)

Awards and honors

In 1995, Foster became the recipient of the Order of British Columbia, the highest honour awarded in his native province of British Columbia. Foster became an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006.

Foster has won 15 Grammy Awards (three for producer of the year) and has been nominated a total of 46 times.

He has been nominated three times for an Academy Award for Best Song and won the 1999 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for the song “The Prayer” (sung by Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion) from the film ''Quest for Camelot''. He has been named BMI's "Songwriter of the Year". In June 2010, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

See also

Music of Canada

Canadian Music Hall of Fame

List of Canadian composers

References

Further reading

External links

Official website

David Foster on ''The Hour''

Category:Canadian expatriate musicians in the United States Category:Canadian pop musicians Category:Canadian record producers Category:Fellows of the Royal Conservatory of Music Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Golden Globe Award winning musicians Category:Canadian Music Hall of Fame inductees Category:Canadian humanitarians Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Juno Award winners Category:Members of the Order of British Columbia Category:Officers of the Order of Canada Category:People from Victoria, British Columbia Category:1949 births Category:Living people

bg:Дейвид Фостър de:David Foster es:David Foster fr:David Foster (compositeur) it:David Foster nl:David Foster (musicus) ja:デイヴィッド・フォスター no:David Foster pl:David Foster pt:David Foster ru:Фостер, Дэвид fi:David Foster sv:David Foster th:เดวิด ฟอสเตอร์

Name	Paul Watson
Birth date
Birth place	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Occupation	Activist
Spouse	Starlet LumLisa RobertsAllison Lance
Website	SeaShepherd.org
Footnotes	}}

Paul Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian animal rights and environmental activist, who founded and is president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a direct action group devoted to marine conservation.

The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was an early and influential member of Greenpeace, crewed and skippered for it, and later was a board member. Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, was ousted from the board in 1977, and subsequently left the organization. That same year, he formed Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group is the subject of a reality show, ''Whale Wars''.

He also promotes veganism, voluntary human population control, and a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, worldview.

Early and personal life

Paul Watson was born in Toronto to Anthony Joseph Watson and Annamarie Larsen, and grew up in St. Andrews, New Brunswick. After working as a tour guide at Expo 67, the World's Fair that took place in Montreal in 1967, Watson "rode the rails" in boxcars west to Vancouver.

In 1968 and the early 1970s, he joined the Canadian Coast Guard, where he served aboard weatherships, search and rescue hovercraft, and buoy tenders. He signed up as a merchant seaman in 1969 with the Norwegian Consulate in Vancouver and shipped out on the 35,000 ton bulk carrier ''Bris'' as a deck hand. The ''Bris'' was registered in Oslo, Norway and manifested for the Indian Ocean and Pacific trade.

Watson has one child, Lilliolani (“Lani”) Paula Lum Watson (born 1980) with his first wife, Starlet Lum, who was a founding director of Greenpeace Quebec, Earthforce!, Project Wolf, and Sea Shepherd. His second wife, Lisa Roberts, a former model, was Sea Shepherd's Director of Operations during the Makah anti-whaling campaigns in Friday Harbor. His third wife, Allison Lance, is an animal rights activist and a volunteer crew member of Sea Shepherd.

Activism

Early years

In October 1969, Watson joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing at Amchitka Island. The group which formed as a result of that protest was the Don't Make a Wave Committee, which evolved into the group known today as Greenpeace. Watson sailed as a crewmember aboard the ''Greenpeace Too!'' ship in 1971 and skippered the Greenpeace boat ''Astral'' in 1972. Paul Watson continued as a crew member, skipper, and officer aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. According to Watson, in June 1975 during a Greenpeace campaign to confront Soviet whaling, an incident occurred which changed his life.

Greenpeace states that Watson "...was an influential early member but not, as he sometimes claims, a founder." Paul Watson maintains he was indeed a founding member.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

The first Sea Shepherd vessel, the ''Sea Shepherd'', was purchased in December 1978 with assistance from Fund for Animals. Sea Shepherd soon established itself as one of the more controversial environmental groups, known for provocative direct action tactics. These tactics have included throwing objects onto the decks of whaling ships, the use of "prop foulers" in an attempt to sabotage the ships, boarding whaling vessels, and the scuttling of two ships in an Icelandic harbor. Watson remains the leader of Sea Shepherd today and uses the title "Admiral" in reference to his role in the organization, although he has never been licensed as a ship's captain. The organization and its activities to halt whaling are the focus of a reality TV series, ''Whale Wars'', airing on Animal Planet.

Other environmental activities

Watson was a field correspondent for Defenders of Wildlife from 1976 to 1980 and a field representative for the Fund for Animals from 1978 to 1981. Watson also was a co-founder of Friends of the Wolf and Earthforce Environmental Society.

During the 1980s, Watson declared his support for Earth First! and cultivated friendships with David Foreman and Edward Abbey. He proclaimed Sea Shepherd to be the "navy" of Earth First! Watson has claimed to have invented the tactic of tree spiking.

Although currently unaffiliated with it, Watson did work with the Green Party of British Columbia in Vancouver in the 1980s and 90s. He ran for mayor in 1996, placing fourth.

In April 2003, Watson was elected to the board of directors of the Sierra Club for a three-year term. In 2006, he did not seek re-election. He resigned from the board a month before his term ended, in protest against the organization's sponsorship of a "Why I Hunt" essay contest.

Watson feels that "no human community should be larger than 20,000 people," human populations need to be reduced radically to "fewer than one billion," and only those who are "completely dedicated to the responsibility" of caring for the biosphere should have children, which is a "very small percentage of humans." He likens humankind to a virus, the biosphere needs to get cured from with a "radical and invasive approach," as from cancer.

In January 2008 Paul Watson was named by ''The Guardian'' as one of its "50 people who could save the planet" for the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Writings on activism

Watson published ''Earthforce!'', a guide to strategy for environmental activists in 1993. In it, he specifically endorsed the tactics of "monkeywrenching" previously described by Dave Foreman and Edward Abbey. According to Foreman in ''Eco-Defense—The Field Guide to Monkey-Wrenching'', these are tactics of sabotage, covert activity, and direct action. Watson says he incorporated his own personal experience in writing the book.

In ''Earthforce! An Earth Warrior’s Guide to Strategy'', Watson also expresses disdain for truthfulness in the pursuit of environmental protection goals:

The nature of the mass media today is such that the truth is irrelevant. What is true and what is right to the general public is what is defined as true and right by the mass media. Ronald Reagan understood that the facts are not relevant. The media reported what he said as fact. Follow-up investigation was “old news.” A headline comment on Monday’s newspaper far outweighs the revelation of inaccuracy revealed in a small box inside the paper on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Watson was explicit on this score: “If you do not know an answer, a fact, or a statistic, then simply follow the example of an American President and do as Ronald Reagan did—make it up on the spot and deliver the information confidently and without hesitation.” In a subsequent book, ''Ocean Warrior'', Watson reiterated this view, saying: “Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives.”

Controversy

Removal from Greenpeace Board

Paul Watson continued as a crewmember, officer, and skipper (in 1972) aboard several Greenpeace voyages throughout the mid-1970s. He considers himself a founding member of Greenpeace and Greenpeace International, a claim Greenpeace disputes. Friends noted that his personality, his liking to "push himself front and centre", was to blame in addition to his espousing direct actions that Greenpeace did not agree with.

In 1977, Watson was expelled from the Greenpeace's board of directors by a vote of 11 to 1 (Watson himself cast the single vote against it). The group felt his strong, "front and center" personality and frequently voiced opposition to Greenpeace's interpretation of "nonviolence" were too divisive. Watson subsequently left the group. The group has since labeled his actions at the time as those of a "mutineer" within their ranks. That same year, he founded his own group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

During an interview in 1978 with CBC Radio, Watson spoke out against Greenpeace (as well as other organizations) and their role and motives for the anti-sealing campaigns. Watson accused these organizations of campaigning against the Canadian seal hunt because it is an easy way to raise money and it is a profit maker for the organizations.

Greenpeace has called Watson a violent extremist and will no longer comment on his activities. Watson was arrested in 1993 in Canada on charges stemming from actions against Cuban and Spanish fishing boats off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1997, Watson was convicted ''in absentia'' and sentenced to serve 120 days in jail by a court in Lofoten, Norway on charges of attempting to sink the small scale Norwegian fishing and whaling vessel ''Nybrænna'' on 26 December 1992. Dutch authorities refused to hand him over to Norwegian authorities although he did spend 80 days in detention in the Netherlands pending a ruling on extradition before being released.

There have not been any successful attempts at prosecuting Watson for his activities with Sea Shepherd since the trial in Newfoundland. Watson himself defends his actions as falling within international law, in particular Sea Shepherd's right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers and sealers. Watson caught a Costa Rican fishing boat poaching in Guatemalan waters while he was on a journey to Costa Rica, having been invited by its president to help in the fight against shark poaching there. The authorities in Costa Rica later filed a charge of attempted murder against Watson and a colleague, Rob Stewart, in what Watson and Stewart have described as an effort to cover up mafia-funded illegal shark finning operations. They eventually fled to international waters to escape arrest by Costa Rican coast guards after they had filmed what they attest was mafia-funded shark-finning in private docks. These events are featured in ''Sharkwater'', a documentary about sharks and activism.

Watson was also told to leave Iceland after disabling two ships in harbor and turning himself in to the Icelandic police . Kristjan Loftsson of Iceland's largest whaling company told ''The New Yorker'' that Watson is ''persona non grata'' in that country.

In April 2010, the Japanese Coast Guard obtained an arrest warrant for Watson "...on suspicion of ordering sabotage activities against Japan's whaling fleet", and Interpol has listed him as wanted at the request of Japan. The blue notice asks national police forces to provide information on Watson's whereabouts and activities, but does not seek an arrest.

Sierra Club immigration stance

After his election to the national Sierra Club Board of Directors in 2003, Watson supported an unsuccessful slate of candidates supporting strict immigration controls as an element of a population stabilization policy. This effort was denounced by another candidate in the election, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, as a "hostile takeover" attempt by "radical anti-immigrant activists." Watson responded by saying that the only change he was seeking in the organization's immigration stance was to restore the position it had held before its 1996 "neutrality policy." Watson left the Sierra Club board in 2006.

Anti-sealing activities

In April 2008, Watson stated that, while the deaths of three Canadian seal hunters (a fourth one is still missing) in a marine accident involving a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and a fishing boat during the 2008 Canadian Commercial Seal Hunt were a tragedy, he felt that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seals is an even greater tragedy. Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn accused Watson of trivializing the memory of the lost sealers. Watson replied that Mr. Hearn was trying to distract attention from his government's incompetence as the boat the men were on capsized while under tow by a Canadian Coast Guard vessel, while his political ambitions continued to support and subsidize an industry that had no place in the 21st Century. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams was quoted as saying, "I think what a lot of people don't realize is that this man is a terrorist." Due to the operations against Canadian seal hunters, Danny Williams called Watson a terrorist and said that the Sea Shepherds were not welcome in the province.

Australian visa issues

In October 2009 Watson, who carries a US passport, complained to media outlets about having his request for an Australian visa denied. He states that the Australian government was attempting to sabotage the upcoming 2010 Sea Shepherd campaign by denying him entry into the country. Watson and several other shipmates were also unable to join the MV Steve Irwin on its promotional tour of Australia until they were able to provide documentation from the governments of the United States, Canada and Norway, exonerating them from previously claimed acts of violence, specifically claims by Sea Shepherd of intentionally sinking a ship in Norway.

Anti-whaling activities and alleged shooting

On March 17, 2008 Paul Watson said that he was shot by the Japanese crew or coast guard personnel during the Operation Migaloo anti-whaling campaign in the Southern Ocean. The incident is documented during the season finale of season 1 of the ''Whale Wars'' TV reality show, and the first six episodes are covered as a buildup to what is portrayed as the major incident during the campaign. The footage in ''Whale Wars'' shows Watson standing on the deck of the ''Steve Irwin'' while Sea Shepherd crew throws glass bottles filled with butyric acid at the ''Nisshin Maru'' whaling vessel. Butyric acid was used for its foul odor and sticky properties. The Japanese respond by throwing flashbang devices. Watson is then shown reaching inside his jacket and body armour and remarking "I've been hit." Back inside the bridge of the Steve Irwin, a metal fragment is found inside the vest.

The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research has dismissed Sea Shepherd's statements as lies. The Institute and Coast Guard said that they used seven flashbang devices designed to flash and make noise in the air without causing harm. Neither of the two conflicting accounts have been independently verified. The Australian Foreign Affairs Department had condemned "actions by crew members of any vessel that cause injury". Two media releases were made on the same day from the office. One said that the Australian Embassy in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese that the whalers had "fired warning shots" while the updated version used the phrase "'warning balls' – also known as 'flashbangs' – had been fired".

Watson has been called an eco terrorist by the Japanese government for his direct action tactics against whalers, and have repeated their position after conflicts during the 2009-10 whaling season.

Leadership style

His leadership style has variously been called arrogant, as well as pushing himself too much "front and center"," which was cited as being one of the reasons he and Greenpeace parted ways. The atmosphere aboard his vessels has been compared to an "anarchy run by God" ,on the other hand, most crew members state he has "exceptional leading capabilities" and is a "a man fit to be in command".

Attitudes about his activism

At a animal rights convention in 2002, Paul Watson was also quoted as saying, "There's nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history." Recently, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck also discussed the comment, criticizing Watson's views. Watson responded to Beck's comments on the official Sea Shepherd website by stating that he had said that but that it was taken out of context, quoting Gerald Seymour's "One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.”

Watson has stated that he does not consider himself a 'protester', but an 'interventionist', as he considers protesting as too submissive. He often takes the attitude that he represents (or stands in for) law enforcement which is either unwilling or unable to enforce existing laws.

In popular culture

A biographical documentary on Paul Watson's early life and background entitled ''Pirate for the Sea'' was produced by Ron Colby in 2008. The 2009 documentary ''At the Edge of the World'' chronicled the efforts of Watson and 45 volunteers to hinder the Japanese whaling fleet in the waters around Antarctica.

Watson, ''Whale Wars'', and the Japanese whaling industry were satirized in the ''South Park'' episode "Whale Whores". Watson himself was called "An unorganized incompetent media whore who thought lying to everyone was OK as long as it served his cause" and "A smug, narcoleptic liar with no credibility". Watson responded to the ''South Park'' episode by stating; "My understanding is that the Japanese prime minister was not amused, and the whalers and dolphin killers are enraged at the way they were portrayed," Watson said. "That’s music to my ears. If the humorless whale killers and the bank-rollers of the dolphin killers did not like the show, then that’s all I need to applaud it."

Works

''Sea Shepherd: My Fight for Whales and Seals'' (1981) (ISBN 0-393-01499-1)

''Earthforce! An Earth Warrior's Guide to Strategy'' (1993) (ISBN 0-9616019-5-7)

''Ocean Warrior: My Battle to End the Illegal Slaughter on the High Seas'' (1994) (ISBN 1-55013-599-6)

''Seal Wars: Twenty-Five Years on the Front Lines With the Harp Seals'' (2002) (ISBN 1-55297-751-X)

Contributor to ''Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberations of Animals'' (2004) (ISBN 1-59056-054-X)

References

Further reading

''Earth Warrior: Overboard With Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society'', by David B. Morris (1995) (ISBN 1-55591-203-6)

''Eco-Warriors'', by Rik Scarce (2006) (ISBN 1-59874-028-8)

External links

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society official website

Category:1950 births Category:Canadian environmentalists Category:Canadian vegans Category:Green Party of British Columbia politicians Category:Greenpeace Category:Sierra Club Category:Living people Category:Green thinkers Category:Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Category:Sustainability advocates Category:People from Charlotte County, New Brunswick Category:People from Toronto Category:Animal rights advocates

de:Paul Watson es:Paul Watson fr:Paul Watson is:Paul Watson it:Paul Watson nl:Paul Watson ja:ポール・ワトソン no:Paul Watson pl:Paul Watson pt:Paul Watson ru:Уотсон, Пол fi:Paul Watson sv:Paul Watson tr:Paul Watson

name	Sinclair Lewis
birth name	Harry Sinclair Lewis
birth date	February 07, 1885
birth place	Sauk Centre, Minnesota
death date	January 10, 1951
death place	Rome, Italy
occupation	Novelist, Playwright, Short story writer
nationality	American
awards	}}

Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." His works are known for their insightful and critical views of American society and capitalist values, as well as for their strong characterizations of modern working women.

He has been honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a Great Americans series postage stamp.

Biography

Childhood and education

Born in the village of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, Lewis began reading books at a young age and kept a diary. He had two siblings, Fred (born 1875) and Claude (born 1878). His father, Edwin J. Lewis, was a physician and a stern disciplinarian who had difficulty relating to his sensitive, unathletic third son. Lewis's mother, Emma Kermott Lewis, died in 1891. The following year, Edwin Lewis married Isabel Warner, whose company young Lewis apparently enjoyed. Throughout his lonely boyhood, the ungainly Lewis — tall, extremely thin, stricken with acne and somewhat popeyed — had trouble gaining friends and pined after various local girls. At the age of 13 he unsuccessfully ran away from home, wanting to become a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War.

In late 1902 Lewis left home for a year at Oberlin Academy (the then-preparatory department of Oberlin College) to qualify for acceptance by Yale University. While at Oberlin, he developed a religious enthusiasm that waxed and waned for much of his remaining teenage years. He entered Yale in 1903 but did not receive his bachelor's degree until 1908, having taken time off to work at Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair's cooperative-living colony in Englewood, New Jersey, and to travel to Panama. Lewis's unprepossessing looks, "fresh" country manners and seemingly self-important loquacity made it difficult for him to win and keep friends at Oberlin and Yale. He did initiate a few relatively long-lived friendships among students and professors, some of whom recognized his promise as a writer.

Early career

Lewis's earliest published creative work—romantic poetry and short sketches—appeared in the ''Yale Courant'' and the ''Yale Literary Magazine'', of which he became an editor. After graduation Lewis moved from job to job and from place to place in an effort to make ends meet, write fiction for publication and to chase away boredom. While working for newspapers and publishing houses (and for a time at the Carmel-by-the-Sea, California writers' colony), he developed a facility for turning out shallow, popular stories that were purchased by a variety of magazines. He also earned money by selling plots to Jack London, including one for the latter's unfinished novel ''The Assassination Bureau, Ltd''.

Lewis's first published book was ''Hike and the Aeroplane'', a Tom Swift-style potboiler that appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham.

Sinclair Lewis's first serious novel, ''Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man'', appeared in 1914, followed by ''The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life'' (1915) and ''The Job'' (1917). That same year also saw the publication of another potboiler, ''The Innocents: A Story for Lovers'', an expanded version of a serial story that had originally appeared in ''Woman's Home Companion''. ''Free Air'', another refurbished serial story, was published in 1919.

Marriage and family

In 1914 Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger, an editor at ''Vogue'' magazine. They had one son, Wells Lewis (1917–1944), named after British author H. G. Wells. Wells Lewis was killed while serving in the military in World War II.

Lewis divorced Grace in 1925. On May 14, 1928, he married Dorothy Thompson, a political newspaper columnist. Later in 1928, he and Dorothy purchased a second home in rural Vermont. They had a son, Michael Lewis, in 1930. Their marriage had virtually ended by 1937, and they divorced in 1942. Michael Lewis became an actor, and died in 1975 at age 44.

Commercial success

Upon moving to Washington, D.C., Lewis devoted himself to writing. As early as 1916, he began taking notes for a realistic novel about small-town life. Work on that novel continued through mid-1920, when he completed ''Main Street'', which was published on October 23, 1920. As his biographer Mark Schorer wrote, the phenomenal success of ''Main Street'' "was the most sensational event in twentieth-century American publishing history." Based on sales of his prior books, Lewis's most optimistic projection was a sale of 25,000 copies. In the first six months of 1921, ''Main Street'' sold 180,000 copies, and within a few years, sales were estimated at two million. According to Richard Lingeman, "''Main Street'' earned Sinclair Lewis about three million current [2002] dollars". Lewis followed up this first great success with ''Babbitt'' (1922), a novel that satirized the American commercial culture and boosterism. The story was set in the fictional Midwestern town of Zenith, Winnemac, a setting to which Lewis would return in future novels, including ''Gideon Planish'' and ''Dodsworth''.

Lewis continued his success in the 1920s with ''Arrowsmith'' (1925), a novel about the challenges faced by an idealistic doctor. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (which Lewis refused). Adapted as a 1931 Hollywood film directed by John Ford and starring Ronald Colman, it was nominated for four Academy Awards.

Next Lewis published ''Elmer Gantry'' (1927), which depicted an evangelical minister as deeply hypocritical. The novel was denounced by many religious leaders and banned in some U.S. cities. Adapted for the screen more than a generation later, the novel was the basis of the 1960 movie starring Burt Lancaster, who earned a Best Actor Oscar for his performance.

Lewis closed out the decade with ''Dodsworth'' (1929), a novel about the most affluent and successful members of American society. He portrayed them as leading essentially pointless lives in spite of great wealth and advantages. The book was adapted for the Broadway stage in 1934 by Sidney Howard, who also wrote the screenplay for the 1936 film version. Directed by William Wyler and a great success at the time, the film is still highly regarded. In 1990, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, and in 2005 ''Time'' magazine named it one of the "100 Best Movies" of the past 80 years.

During the late 1920s and 1930s, Lewis wrote many short stories for a variety of magazines and publications. "Little Bear Bongo" (1936), a tale about a bear cub who wanted to escape the circus in search of a better life in the real world, was published in ''Cosmopolitan'' magazine. The story was acquired by Walt Disney Pictures in 1940 for a possible feature film. World War II sidetracked those plans until 1947. Disney used the story (now titled "Bongo") as part of its feature ''Fun and Fancy Free''.

Alcoholism

After an alcoholic binge in 1937, Lewis checked into the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for treatment. His doctors gave Lewis a blunt assessment that he needed to decide "whether he was going to live without alcohol or die by it, one or the other." Lewis checked out after 10 days, lacking, one of his physicians wrote to a colleague, any "fundamental understanding of his problem."

Later years

After winning the Nobel Prize, Lewis wrote eleven more novels, ten of which appeared in his lifetime. The best remembered is ''It Can't Happen Here'', a novel about the election of a fascist to the American presidency.

''Kingsblood Royal'' (1947) is set in the fictional city Grand Republic, Minnesota, an enlarged and updated version of Zenith. Based on the Sweet Affair in Chicago, in which an African-American doctor was denied the chance to purchase a house in a "white" section of the city, ''Kingsblood Royal'' was a powerful and very early contribution to the civil rights movement.

Lewis died in Rome on January 10, 1951, aged 65, from advanced alcoholism. His cremated remains were buried in Sauk Centre. A final novel, ''World So Wide'' (1951), was published posthumously.

William Shirer, a friend and admirer of Lewis, disputes accounts that Lewis died of alcoholism ''per se''. He reported that Lewis had a heart attack and that his doctors advised him to stop drinking if he wanted to live. Lewis did not, and perhaps could not, stop; he died when his heart stopped.

In summing up Lewis' career, Shirer concludes, "It has become rather commonplace for so-called literary critics to write off Sinclair Lewis as a novelist. Compared to...Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Faulkner...Lewis lacked style. Yet his impact on modern American life...was greater than all of the other four writers together."

Parodies and Satires

In ''The New Yorker'', Wolcott Gibbs once published a spoof of Lewis' novel ''Cass Timberlane'' which he titled "Shad Ampersand."

See also

Sinclair Lewis Boyhood Home

The Palmer House (Sauk Centre)

Works

Notes

References

Mark Schorer, ''Sinclair Lewis: An American Life'' (McGraw-Hill, 1961)

Richard R. Lingeman, ''Sinclair Lewis: Rebel From Main Street'' (Borealis Books, 2002)

Further reading

Lingeman, Richard ed. ''Sinclair Lewis: Main Street & Babbitt'' (Library of America, 1992) ISBN 978-0-940450-61-5

Lingeman, Richard ed. ''Sinclair Lewis: Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth'' (Library of America, 2002) ISBN 978-1-931082-08-2

D. J. Dooley, ''The Art of Sinclair Lewis,'' 1967.

Martin Light, ''The Quixotic Vision of Sinclair Lewis,'' 1975.

''Modern Fiction Studies,'' vol. 31.3, Autumn 1985, special issues on Sinclair Lewis.

''Sinclair Lewis at 100: Papers Presented at a Centennial Conference,'' 1985.

Martin Bucco, ''Main Street: The Revolt of Carol Kennicott,'' 1993.

James M. Hutchisson, ''The Rise of Sinclair Lewis, 1920–1930,'' 1996.

Glen A. Love, ''Babbitt: An American Life''

Stephen R. Pastore, ''Sinclair Lewis: A Descriptive Bibliography,'' 1997.

Stephen R. Pastore, ''Sinclair Lewis: A Descriptive Bibliography, 2d ed.'' 2009.

External links

Online collection of works

Babbitt from American Studies at the University of Virginia.

Works by Sinclair Lewis at Project Gutenberg Australia

his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters.

Sinclair Lewis Society

Autobiography

"Sinclair Lewis: The Man From Main Street" WBGU-PBS documentary

Hutchisson, ''The Rise of Sinclair Lewis, 1920-1930'', Penn State Press, 2001 ISBN 0-271-02123-3

A Tribute To Two Sinclairs Sinclair Lewis & Upton Sinclair''

Category:1885 births Category:1951 deaths Category:20th-century novelists Category:Alcohol-related deaths in Italy Category:American dramatists and playwrights Category:American expatriates in Italy Category:American Nobel laureates Category:American novelists Category:American people of Welsh descent Category:American satirists Category:American short story writers Category:Nobel laureates in Literature Category:Oberlin College alumni Category:People from New Haven, Connecticut Category:Prometheus Award winning authors Category:Pulitzer Prize for the Novel winners Category:Writers from California Category:Writers from Minnesota Category:Writers from Washington, D.C. Category:Yale University alumni

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